 Did you know that Nami was originally meant to be one of the Straw Hat's top fighters? And as for what kind of fighter she would have been, well, I think the only way to really describe it is ripped jeans and cyborg battle axe. Hello and welcome to the Grand Line Review, your source for everything One Piece, and today we are here to examine what could have been as we take a deep dive into the original One Piece. Etchera Oda's initial idea is that four whatever reason were eventually scrapped, which is all part of the creative process, although this process is on a completely different level in One Piece because Etchera Oda isn't really an artist who, you know, settles for good enough. Which you can see quite clearly in his time-lapse drawings of color spreads. He will often discard four or five entirely workable composition ideas only to settle on something completely different from where he initially set out. And this goes for every aspect of the series, be it character design, story choices, or even core features of the world. Another great example of which is the fact that originally there was only going to be one type of devil fruit being the Gomu Gomu Nami. So already with that choice in mind, One Piece is going to look pretty radically different and chock full of rubber people. But that leads us quite nicely into a round of trippy trivia, a very simple minigame where I'm going to ask you a multiple choice question and you, yes, you are going to answer it. However, should you answer incorrectly, then your punishment will be to subscribe to the Grand Line Review, which will also result in consistent injections of One Piece culture administered straight into your YouTube feed. However, if you do answer correctly, then you will be crowned as the cleverest of all of the people viewing this video. So here is our trippy trivia question. The original Gomu Gomu Nami was said to fruit from the Gomu Gomu Tree once every how many years? Is it A. 50 years, B. 100 years, or C. 156 years? So half a century, a full century, or a weirdly specific Japanese number pun? Which will it be? Please do select your choice now and we shall reveal the answer in 3, 2, 1, and bam, it was A. The Gomu Gomu would only bear fruit once every 50 years. So if you guessed incorrectly, then you know the thing to do and please do say hi in the comments below if you are a new member of the Grand Fleet. Welcome. But now let's continue our exploration of the original One Piece and everything we've currently heard about the Gomu Gomu Nami spawned from the One Piece prototypes of Roman Storm. Two one-shot chapters that really do provide us with some bizarre insight into the intentions of Etchera Oda in the early days. One of which I quite enjoy is that Garp was originally supposed to be not only a pirate, but the figure whom Luffy received both his devil fruit and straw hat from. So Garp was very much poised to be an emotional center for Luffy is what I'd like to say anyway because as it turns out using Garp in Roman Storm was but a clever ruse from Oda because he wanted to keep shanks under wraps and really surprised people with the eventual first chapter of One Piece, which is a very bold move for a rookie mangaka producing a one-shot like that but it absolutely paid off. Showing that even at these very early stages Oda was quite a scheming individual, always thinking about how One Piece could have its greatest impact. Now speaking of impact, let's talk about Blackbeard, one of the most sinister mysteries in the series but Oda's original intentions regarding him open up quite a profound window into this man thing or more specifically Oda's intentions regarding Blackbeard's family. Because in volume eight of One Piece magazine it was revealed that Oda had plans and even concepts sketches of Blackbeard's mother as well as his two sisters. Now it has been confirmed that these are only concepts and not canon at all thus far but it is fascinating because Blackbeard as known to us is portrayed as a very lonely orphan boy thus far we haven't had any hint of family but the most interesting thing is when we look at the sketches of his intended sisters because here we can also see a drawing of Ace reacting to them which means that we can place exactly where their reveal was meant to happen in the series. Basically Ace would have tracked down Blackbeard on Banara Island and discovered him with his two not-at-all Blackbeard-looking sisters which is to say that they are pretty and he is well look I suppose beauty is subjective. I mean I'm sure there's someone out there who probably wants to know that a bit of a toss would teach but not me probably not you and definitely not Ace who stumbles into this bizarre situation this sickening murderer with a surprisingly delightful and charming family and this is one of those things that sure seems to be a discarded idea but I would keep it in mind going forward because it may be reworked in some way shape or form whereas something that was completely scrapped was a peculiar character trait intended for one Sir Crocodile. In the data book One Piece Green, Secret Pieces, we let the Crocodile was supposed to be a figure that took quite a bit of inspiration from the riddler. The idea being that Crocodile would frequently assault enemies and allies alike with these difficult riddles and the really fun thing is that if we do look at one of his early sketches his hook even took the shape of a funky question mark which to be fair and it still sort of is that shape but it was toned down slightly but regardless that's still quite a cool little origin story to Crocodile's hook there and unlike a lot of original ideas I'm quite glad that Oda you know decided not to go with this one and when you think about it Crocodile doesn't have a gimmick he's more of a straight-up bad guy and many of the more celebrated antagonists of One Piece also inhabit that sort of space like say Rob Lucci or Charlotte Katakuri and I for one cannot imagine Rob Lucci halting his battle with Luffy to pose a puzzling riddle although maybe. Mugiwara in order to defeat me you must first answer these riddles three. Question number the first and then we cut to Luffy punching him in the face because nobody likes riddles and it was a very good decision from Oda to let this idea go although the weird gimmicks tend to be given to lesser antagonists and they do work to great effect so uh-huh and funnily enough original Crocodile is not the only inspiration that was lifted from Batman because way way way back in the day buggy was supposed to be a much more terrifying Joker style character I mean just look at this art it is downright sinister it's legitimately like looking at the Joker in buggy cosplay perhaps after discovering the Bruce Wayne is some sort of crippling One Piece addict is the best part though so once buggy was supposed to have this much edgier vibe his original name certainly didn't quite match that vibe in my opinion as he was originally supposed to be called boogie the clown and the reason why this change was eventually made had nothing at all to do with how it sounded but everything to do with the nightmare before Christmas which of course featured the character of oogie boogie so I suppose that shut down that idea and just while we're on buggy this is a very well known change but relevant nonetheless because in case you're unaware at one stage Zoro was going to be part of buggy's crew and Oda even described an intended crew dynamic where there was something of a family with Zoro acting in the role of the eldest brother and whilst this is quite well known it's an idea that still fascinates me to this day because it makes me wonder how Zoro would have eventually been recruited and it's also another one of those situations where I think we're quite fortunate that Oda didn't settle for these initial plans because what we got instead was far more powerful and far more potent whereas a lot of you know lesser authors have a tendency to come up with an idea than immediately just set it into stone without necessarily exploring further and refining it. Oda's refinement in this case did throw a lot of initial plans out of whack though one being that Nami was supposed to be the first crew member to join instead of Zoro and this is pretty clear when we look back on both versions of romance dawn as the Nami style character either being Anne or silk is the first person to meet Luffy on his wacky quest and that would be a role that would be given to Kobe in the actual series but to return to the idea of a battle axe Nami from the intro this picture is not the only one we have to go on and there is a more subdued concept sketch where Nami is depicted with a more simplistic polearm style axe once again indicating that she was meant to be a much more deadly member of the crew instead the axe part eventually got taken off and Nami was given a glorified stick and yeah I guess it's just interesting to see that evolution in many ways it does seem like a bit of a downgrade because battle axe Nami looks so so damn awesome but then again Nami and the climate actor just such a perfect fit when she eventually did get it that is still kind of want to see Nami slice a fool for another well-known intention I do also get a kick out of the fact that Sanji was originally supposed to be named Naruto and Datebio etc however this was swiftly changed when a certain ninja manga began serialization prior to Naruto being introduced in the Barathe arc and also quite interestingly Naruto was originally supposed to be something of a gunslinger he has this very old west vibe about him and this is very different from how Naruto Sanji would eventually end up and along with Nami's battle axe it looks like at one stage Oda made the decision to just tone down the potential brutality of one piece as a whole giving characters like Nami and Naruto more blunt force-based attacks I mean you do still have cutting attacks from Zoro and gun-based attacks from Frankie but look in the case of the latter when have Frankie's guns ever done anything of use it's just like weapons left and then he shoots seemingly aimlessly it's basically a theatrical effect because it never hits anything and if it does there is no damage whereas gunslinging Sanji really would have needed to use them guns to a much greater and probably a much more brutal effect now in addition to violence we also have cases where character personalities were toned down and for this we're going to be looking specifically at lore and you can actually see this within the series pre timeskip lore is portrayed as a very mysterious dude guy and while I wouldn't go so far as to say sinister he had a very clear ominous agenda and this ominosity is confirmed to us thanks again to One Piece Magazine where we have an early post timeskip sketch of lore interacting with Sanji and here Sanji is using his brain thing he twigs to the fact that lore is acting quite underhandedly to which lore replies with something along the lines of oh ho ho you're quite sharp aren't you but that like evil evil smug smirk and very much into this kind of darker antagonist lore things could have gone so so differently which is very different from how this interaction ultimately played out as well as lore in general who became much more sympathetic and an emotional protagonist style character something that we do know for a fact was not planned with his introduction because and this is mind-blowing but none of the supernova members were planned to exist at all so this is an example of improvisation at its most extreme and possibly most potent because in an interview that Oda conducted for the 27th log he stated that the supernovas didn't exist in any way shape or form prior to the very chapter in which they were introduced and they were hastily constructed and thrown in because Oda thought that Sabati was not going to be a very interesting awkward things how they were so at the last second he squeezed out nine phenomenal character designs with no concept whatsoever of how integral they were going to become in the future in fact Oda has also said that he regrets making so many of them because it's been a lot to handle but I personally could not disagree more I can't even imagine what one piece especially what post timeskip one piece would have been without them and we also have a very similar situation happening with the seven warlords actually because Oda's original intentions was to have one piece be a far more simplistic tale of facing off against the four emperors a concept that would not even be introduced until almost a full decade into the series so somewhere along the line we clearly got a bit derailed and that's primarily because on a pure whim Oda decided to drop in the idea of the seven warlords of the sea quite early on he had no grand plans with them in fact the number seven was seemingly completely arbitrary he just thought that seven sounded you know much cooler than other numbers such as five five is always a very disappointing number after all but the ripple effect of this decision is probably the most profound in the entire series even more so than the last-minute supernovas because these warlords swiftly took command of one piece with many of them taking an absolutely gigantic arc or even saga of their own to explore and defeat think about it this way crocodile gecko moria and doflamingo now three main luffy warlord antagonists together their sagas take up 313 chapters of the series and 279 episodes and as it stands that is just under a third of one piece as a whole which would have taken up about 78 years of manga publication time so that is seven to eight years of being sidetracked with Oda's arbitrary seven warlords idea and that doesn't even include arcs like amazon lily or just the sheer amount of time and space given to the warlords throughout the rest of one piece and this is why Oda is encouraged by both his editors and by himself to not dive too deeply into all of his ideas these days because putting in stuff like this does have grand consequences and we would never ever ever see the end of one piece which i don't know personally i wouldn't be arguing too much with but yeah just keep in mind that what we're seeing these days is Oda's streamlined abridged version of one piece and speaking of if you'd like an abridged heal dr of everything that's happened on one or thus far then i have the exact video for you it's a tricky arc to keep up with but after these seven minutes you will be all good to go so i look forward to seeing you there